Mega vessels at rock bottom prices. Just in time for 2017?
That’s like three months from November maybe…
A mega vessel might be safe. A safe place to hide. From the Trumpocalypse. If the Russians are out of surplus subs.
…and here I’d been wondering where Elon Musk was gonna land his BFR reuseable giant Mars rockets . Hmmmm…
Aren’t these massive ships actually a good thing?
How else will they ever get cheap enough for me to buy one as my own personal floating Bond villain lair? I’m not made of money, after all.
More seriously: I thought pound moved per fuel expended huge ships were super efficient? Like, nearly as efficient as bicycles (which, to the best of my knowledge are the gold standard).
I bet that it takes a long time to fill a ship that large with cargo for destinations that match the ship’s route. A smaller vessel could be filled and on its way while the larger ship still sits at the dock, day after day.
I was thinking of tying a few together and building a soaring floating city of junk and containers and anguish. Call it New Sapporo and make Bruce Sterling mayor. If he doesn’t want the job, just steal his AI.
Now we’re taking!
Lash them together in a ring, maybe- with a gate to let smaller boats into the inner lagoon. Set up a composting center to re-supply dirt.
I’ll keep a little tomato plant, and I’ll finally be able to show off and use my secret gills.
What could possibly go wrong?
Simple solution: ocean-view affordable housing, like a houseboat apartment complex.
Boaty McBoatface land!
As a retired Merchant Marine, Chief Cook, this is what the Big Boat corps have brought on themselves. After WWII, the shipping industry changed so radically toward mechanization, that good paying jobs were lost, a way of life, and so went the smaller less efficient ships. But what came was the ridiculous behemoths that require the same size ports, a domino effect has taken place. The smaller ports are past up, these places were summarily executed by way of economic death. It’s sad that the sailor’s way of life is all but dead now, BTW: in my family we can trace that back 4 centuries.
That visited Seattle recently, biggest ship ever to do so. I thought it was supposed to be a sign of things to come, guess not.
Since the era of containerization, the number of possible destinations has dropped a lot. A few ports handle the vast majority of cargo, and it’s trains and trucks that do the point to point work. And multiple cranes can work on a single ship. Bigger ships are more efficient in terms of maximizing time spent shipping and minimizing time spent not shipping, and until now that efficiency swamped all the others. They have just gotten so big that other efficiencies (like standardized port sizes) have begun to matter.
Also a good bet when the sea levels rise…
I would like to take this opportunity to announce my campaign for Mayor of Boatville!
dang i was really hoping for the sizes to keep increasing until they essentially became bridges
Nice trick, but you use a normal deck of cards for bridge, you dummy.
Care to try for a grand slam, or are you content with this rubber?
I would assume that the containers themselves would be overbuilt too, but they still seem to be overly expensive for me to buy and build a workshop in. $3000+ each, where I am.
No, no, this kind of bridge deck:
You wanna deal on a bridge?
(I don’t know why you would -wind’d blue the cards everywhere.)
